Poems by Frank Martinus Arion

Breadcrumb

Translated by Arturo Desimone

Same way a melody can enter a man, rips into him
Sending him to shimmy and dance on his feet,
Pushing him to lose his balance and his good name,
making smoke come smoldering off his marching body—

Your lips have done the same to me.
Almost dead now from smoke and dancing, I need a guitar for me to play
Rip this motherfucker from where it stood in my soul
Before it turns me into a crazy lizard
Or fires me to pop open yet another fuming bottle.

Well, all that noise is nowhere to be found on your lips, unnecessary—
A red flower, whichever way I turn it is looking at me and finds me
Its image, reflected here, blooms and bosoms down low into my soul—

It opens and shuts in front of me, calls
Tells me things, but I can't hear well from afar
While I am wanting, heaving for kisses

I was on my way to the above, Sire, to you
I was on my way to the boulevard and the people,
I turned back at mid-road:
there was more liveliness down there below.

Sire, I halted here, against the greenery. That summit,
I judged to be more fit for someone else.
Here in the green I am that.
There in the valley, sea came in her nest. I smelt
all around me, I smelt
up the clouds
I smelt down the below.
My breast swelled
with water, Sire, water

I climbed further upward. I smelt nitrous oxide and ozone.
Good fumes to be smelling, I thought
And smelt further. It was delightful scent, Sire,
I smelled the whole of heaven.

Between the two blue countries it was empty.
I could savor that smell, thorough, Sire.
I smelt, up until horizon,
white blood of the blue sea.
And I cast back my head.

In Dutch; from Heimwee en de Ruïne (Homesickness and the Ruin) (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2013), 150.

Matrimony

Sometimes, when alone, most unexpectedly
that tire wobbles loosely from your car,
it is like seeing two snorkels, a sad white belly,
it is like seeing beetles, a traffic accident.

As beetles, zoom-zoom, there they flee,
here they come, a couple on the terrace going at it
exposed as the underbelly of a lizard, is what you are
as a defeated black deckhand, you are. You grovel,
your arms outspread. And . . .
One push, one light holy little shove I tell you
—you, who are already teetering on the brink—
One word, one letter, one single night-call ring—
one bite of fear (that fear of being all alone.)
(Finger in the hole of that phone-dial, spin-wheel)—whether or not to—
whether you will marry, you marry
you marry.

Sometimes you marry beneath your social standing,
in that lowly unpoetic bed
of your matrimony.
You marry for good.
Oh, do your wedding in quiet, will you.

Frank Martinus Arion is the literary pseudonym of Frank Ephraim Martinus, (Curaçao, 1936-2015) poet, novelist and linguist of the island Curaçao. In the 1960s, he emigrated as a young Antillean student to the Netherlands, where he majored in Medieval Dutch at the University of Amsterdam, where he completed his dissertation in linguistics, Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu's West-African Connections (published as Frank Ephraim Martinus). The national library of Curaçao bears his name.

Arturo Desimone, Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist, was born and raised on the island Aruba. At 22, he migrated to the Netherlands. He is currently based between Argentina and the Netherlands while working on a long fiction project about childhoods, diasporas, islands and religion. Desimone’s articles, poetry and short fiction pieces have previously appeared in CounterPunch, Círculo de Poesía, Acentos Review, DemocraciaAbierta, and BIM; he also writes a regular column for the Drunken Boat poetry review, titled ''Notes on a Journey to the Ever-Dying Lands''